I have personally nothing against IDN and I think they could do well in the future in many countries and non-Latin languages.
However I'm not sure that IDN will do that well in Latin languages. Why ? Because I think they can be very confusing.
Let me give you a few examples.
The German word for "austria" is "österreich". But before IDNs, this was often written "oesterreich" in URLs. This means that if you want to make a German .com website about Austria and buy the domain österreich.com (IDN), you will definitely lose lots of traffic to oesterreich.com (non-IDN) and osterreich.com (non-IDN).
So unless you own each of these three domains, you will lose a lot of traffic to competitors. And I must say that it's already extremely expensive to buy even one country geo .com domain. Will any business want to spend lots of money on a IDN .com domain like österreich.com if they know that they will lose lots of traffic to competitors who own oesterreich.com and osterreich.com ? I guess not.
Another example in French. "Students" is an excellent keyword. A domain like students.com is surely very valuable and expensive. The French for "students" is "étudiants". But will someone pay a huge amount of money for étudiants.com if they know that they will lose a lot of traffic to etudiants.com ? I'm not sure.
I've been talking about that with some average Internet users from France recently. They were actually trying to convince me that it's impossible to use French accents in URLs. As you can see, IDN are still not known by the public.
I think it's much better to own and develop both étudiants.info and etudiants.info rather than developing étudiants.com without owning etudiants.com (lots of lost traffic there).
But still I think that IDN are really confusing in Latin languages and that's probably why IDN sales have been fairly low in value so far.
you are wrong IDNs wont do well in latin languages countries
i dont know when it will happen but they will do well... for me IDN owners' have to wait at least 10 years
i am and live in a latin language country (brazil) and people really dont know what an IDN is (i am not talking about meaning of IDN but its use) and the problem is people is used to type in without accents but when IDNs be known it can be easily changed and this loss of traffic you told about wont happen
and theres promotion of the site, SEO, eetc...
an example
"maca" is hospital bed in portuguese and "maçã" is apple, so maca's owner has a word totally different from "maçã" but today maca.com can be used for both
if IDN is known i think people will type both names (the one with accent and the other without it) to find which is the best for them
theres a problem for those who dont know abouut accents
these people think every single name have an accent is an IDN when actually is an IDN typo, just like typoes we have here
an example
"avião" means plane, "aviões" means planes; these are the correct spelling
if someone reg "avíão", "ãviao", "aviaõ" they are wrong, they are IDN typoes
thats why sometimes it is confusing for those who dont know accents
I disagree. If this were the case, I wouldn't have some Latin based IDNs receiving a great deal of traffic.
I've also done a great deal of talking to some foreigners in Latin based countries regarding the significance of the accents. End result: I'm pleased with the existence of IDNs.
But let's say you own avião.com. Wouldn't you be worried to lose a massive amount of traffic to aviao.com ?
I understand what you mean, but in so many cases, good .net sites are losing traffic to .com already (big .net sites are often paying a lot to buy the .com in order to prevent this huge amount of traffic loss).
I think that unless you own both avião.com and aviao.com, you'll be losing way too much traffic. That's the major problem of IDNs in Latin languages.
It's all in the keyboards!!! If the keyboard has the characters on it, they will be used.
In france there are many who object to idns for french Domains. Those that object are usually those highly invested in ascii french Domains. This objection holds true in some of the Spanish countries as well, but not as strong as the french. Also, I don't believe that the .fr extension allows idns. If .fr allowed IDNs there would be a very quick shift in thinking.
What's most interesting to me in reading the french forums is that all the content is accented french (correctly), yet the most accepted domains are non-accented ascii's .
May be a different story for french canadians and swiss french.
It's also a generational thing. As IDNs are developed around the world, they will be the "Domain of Choice"
It's also a feedback thing, like Pavlov's dogs....how would you like getting a 404/or page not found everytime you typed in an address in your native language...and your old browser choked on it...
Times have changed, updates in browser and the registration of millions of IDNs (a lot of good ones are already regged) will now allow for a better user experience.
With the recent report of Firefox's 29 percent penetration into european countries..and with many IDNs developed or on the way to being developed...guess what
It appears that snowball has left the top of the mountain.
Phio... I tip my hat to you for having the patience to reply. I was in the middle of replying but just clicked the "X". No need to sit and try to bring it more competition .
It's worse than that because for some latin based IDNs there can be numerous permutations, as in way more than two, of similar looking names that can be formed using accents. What a mess!
And a potential UDRP minefield.
There's money to be for sure with latin based IDNs, but in my view, investing in / developing them is very risky unless one also owns the non-latin non-accented version too; ie. avião.com and aviao.com.
i'm somewhat disappointed with the IDN.com market as well. i have 5 really good (not great) french and swedish IDN.coms. they're parked and get minimal visits. no aftermarket interest at this time at all.
it's too bad most in these countries don't use or realize they can spell some of their words correctly in the URL and get to the site they want.
the german IDN.com and IDN.ge are exceptions. they're widely used and accepted.
Yes .de .com is widely accepted for IDNs in Germany.
As seen in the example of "österreich" The person who owns "oesterreich.com"
will also lose traffic to the owner of "oesterreich.de" "oesterreich.net" etc. as well as "österreich.com" and "österreich.de"
With more extensions, more competition for traffic.
Fearing that you're going to lose traffic is like locking yourself up in a closet to prevent getting hit by a car, struck by lightening, bit by a mosquito, etc.
I understand what you're trying to say with the whole accent situation, but Phio is right. With IDNs you are targeting a specific audience that have these accents on their keyboards.
If I develop a Chinese IDN I care not if someone in America can access it. As awful as that sounds, do some research and you'll know what I mean. I sort of see IDNs as .ccTLDs on super-steroids. You have the brandability of .com/.net (globally known extensions) and an audience that can actually SPELL the word.
I can keep going on and explain the logic behind IDNs and the amount of growth generic IDN holders have experienced in the last year, but I guess it's just something you have to experience.... sort of like when the owners of sex.com, porn.com, travel.com all started experiencing growth with their generic English ASCII domains.
I actually think domain like 八八八.com translate better as eighteighteight.com rather than 888.com. The Chinese use the standard numerals (1,2,3, etc). Short domains like 八.com, 八八.com, or even 八八八.com are probably still worthwhile, but I'm not sure any longer such domain are any good.
I think every domain name is potentially losing traffic to some other version, particularly when we think about plurals, different extensions, etc.
I'm fairly confident that Latin IDNs will take front stage at some point over their ASCII counterparts, particularly in countries that have non-equivalent characters (e.g., Swedish, German) and in countries where native accents are a matter of cultural pride or part of the standard keyboard set-up.
The rise of IDNs will be incremental and ultimately a snowball effect. When awareness expands, so too will the number of visitors to IDNs. When visitors increase, large commercial enterprises and government agencies (financial institutions, etc) will want to get a bite of that traffic, and also brand according to their proper names (involving accents), and will themselves purchase IDNs. When their websites are grinded into the public consciousness, traffic will start snowballing. Just how long this whole process will take is uncertain - in some places it will happen sooner than others.
If the keyboard has the characters on it, they will be used.
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